Tools for Teaching Critical Thinking & Analysis Skills
About the workshop:
The abilities to think critically and apply knowledge are the hallmarks of a university education. Every discipline, however, valorizes critical thinking and analysis in its own manner; each has its own history of approaches to knowledge production. This complexity can make general discussions of “critical thinking” and “analysis” difficult, as one’s disciplinary location will likely determine one’s approach to intellectual work.
This workshop aims to equip participants with the skills to define the processes of critical thinking and analysis from their unique intellectual perspective and develop teaching methods that clarify these processes for students.
About the facilitators:
Keary Watts is a fifth-year candidate in the Interdisciplinary Ph.D. in Theatre & Drama program and is a Franke Graduate Fellow at the Kaplan Institute for the Humanities. His dissertation, “Strategic Re-deployment: the American Blackface Minstrel Tradition from 1965 – 2010” historicizes anti-racist uses of nineteenth-century blackface minstrel conventions by contemporary Black theatre artists. He develops the concept of “strategic re-deployment” to theorize how this artistic choice constitutes a legacy of derogatory representation even as it signifies on this legacy to realize alternative possibilities for understanding resistance politics and advancing social change. He has taught classes on research and scholarly writing, dramatic and performance theory, contemporary American theatre, and race and performance.